Debtor Dynasties

 (Updated below)

The Kochs and the Waltons have their patrimonial dynasties.

The Bushes and the Clintons have their political dynasties.

And just so we won't feel left out, we regular folk have been gifted with our very own debtor dynasties.

Now that the deficit hawks and the plutocrats who own them have been at least temporarily rebuffed in their quest to trim (Democrats) and slash (Republicans) the safety net, the poobahs have decreed that we are now responsible for our ancestors' alleged Social Security overpayments, even if they date back to the last century.

So, if you were hoping for an income tax refund this year and you were orphaned as long ago as the 60s, and your surviving parent or guardian had collected survivor benefits to feed and clothe you, the government just might try to claw some of that money back. They don't even have to supply you with any proof of overpayment. They don't have to obey the various laws exempting children from the debts of their deceased parents. They just keep the money you were counting on to feed and clothe yourself and your own children.

Marc Fisher of the Washington Post has the whole unbelievable story:

A few weeks ago, with no notice, the U.S. government intercepted Mary Grice’s tax refunds from both the IRS and the state of Maryland. Grice had no idea that Uncle Sam had seized her money until some days later, when she got a letter saying that her refund had gone to satisfy an old debt to the government — a very old debt.

When Grice was 4, back in 1960, her father died, leaving her mother with five children to raise. Until the kids turned 18, Sadie Grice got survivor benefits from Social Security to help feed and clothe them.

Now, Social Security claims it overpaid someone in the Grice family — it’s not sure who — in 1977. After 37 years of silence, four years after Sadie Grice died, the government is coming after her daughter. Why the feds chose to take Mary’s money, rather than her surviving siblings’, is a mystery.

All told, writes Fisher, almost $2 billion in refunds have been intercepted by the Treasury this year alone. Very old alleged debts account for $75 million of the confiscated money. And it's all the result of a sneaky little rider tucked into the Farm Bill three years ago. You remember the Farm Bill, the latest version of which cut several billion dollars from the food stamp budget? And which President Obama glowingly touted as shrinking the deficit? (along with shrinking millions of stomachs from lack of food.)

According to the Post, not one government official was willing to take credit for confiscating tax refunds from those hard-working Americans. Obama, though, loves to praise people for their "grit and resilience," for having no choice but to accept those euphemistic hard choices. I hope somebody asks him about this, newly fresh as he is from his Texas speech where he praised himself as the human culmination of LBJ's Civil Rights legislation. I would like to hear about the discrepancy between his civil rights and those of Ms. Grice (she is black) and thousands like her.

Ironically, she works for the federal government (Food and Drug Administration), so this is pretty much a quadruple whammy for her. First, Obama froze her pay. Then, Obama instituted the Insider Threat program requiring her co-workers to turn her in if she has personal or financial problems. Third, she was furloughed last year when the government shut down. And now, the government is taking back nearly $3,000 of her hard-earned money in order to satisfy a debt that may or may not be valid. Luckily, she has a lawyer to sue on her behalf. Whether she is now considered a threat for talking to the press is another story.

Update: Ms. Grice's senator is shocked, shocked at this travesty she knew nothing about, and has hastened to write a strongly-worded letter to the Social Security Administration requesting that their conscience be their guide in future generational thefts. 

Update 2: The Social Security Administration dug deep and located the remnants of its moral compass. I say remnants because due to popular outcry, it will only "suspend" clawing back from survivors alleged over-payments to deceased relatives pending a more thorough review, and only for alleged debts less than 10 years old. So your parent or guardian received payments on your behalf after 2003, you're still on the hook if the government says you are. It's a good thing this is an election year -- that miraculous time when congress critters get all interested in doing stuff for their constituents, and clamoring for press time to brag about same.

The Case of the Millionaire Carpetbagger

Things are really starting to heat up in the 19th Congressional District of New York. Not only is an uber-wealthy political neophyte attempting to buy a seat, he just committed the ultimate faux pas. He refused to be interviewed by Politico! They came all the way up to his Ulster County HQ to talk to him, and the door was locked! Then they went to the private investment firm he started to loan money to local businesses to "create jobs" in this economically struggling backwater of a district. (full disclosure: I live here) And he wasn't in that office, either. So then they went to his palatial residence -- and they couldn't even get past the gates. 

It looked as though Sean Eldridge, like the hapless car salesman in Fargo, was "fleein' the interview."

Even before this brouhaha, I had been totally fired up about the mid-terms. My official choice this fall is between incumbent Chris Gibson, last year named the House's most liberal Republican, (yeah, what an oxymoron) and Democrat Sean Eldridge, the 20-something plutocratic arriviste who bought a luxury estate in a nearby town for $2 million cash so that he could then buy (oops, I mean "run for") Gibson's seat. He and his spouse, Facebook co-founder and New Republic owner Chris Hughes, had previously bought a different luxury estate in a downstate New York district to run against Tea Partier Nan Hayward, but that plan became moot once another wealthy Wall Street Street Democrat, also named Sean (Maloney), defeated her in 2012. Sean & Chris & Chris & Sean. The mind reels.

Like Politico, I have not yet met Sean E., but he, or maybe one of his many handlers, emails me constantly, urgently asking me if I got the last email asking me to sign another petition for immediate delivery to John Boehner, who no doubt will collapse in surrender upon reading it. Earlier this year, Sean the multimillionaire asked me to donate $5 to his campaign as a sign of my outrage over Congress's failure to extend federal unemployment benefits. One thing in Sean's favor is that he favors campaign finance reform. Which I suppose is an easy thing to favor if you're basically financing your own campaign.

I've looked for Sean around town, thinking maybe he'd be out and about, meeting and greeting, or maybe handing out glossy brochures in front of Stop N Shop. What I do see in front of Stop N Shop is a big (mostly empty) bin for any extra groceries people can spare for the hungry people who just got their food stamp stipends slashed in a fit of bonhomie by the millionaire Congress Sean aspires to join. So any spare change is going for peanut butter and Cheerios for my neighbors. Sorry, Sean. I cannot help you meet your goal by the magical midnight hour. Count yourself lucky, though, that you already scored your prince. You will never know how it feels to wake up in rags among rotting pumpkins.

Besides investing in entrepreneurs by loaning them his own personal money, Sean's idea of engaging with the community includes plunking down vast amounts of personal cash to feast at overpriced eateries in an overpriced tourist trap town up here called Woodstock, so as to help boost our struggling economy. And also by donating some unbelievably pricey 3-D printing technology to SUNY-New Paltz -- rather than, say, funding scholarships for needy indebted students, or helping sustain its excellent art and theater programs. Centrist Dems, as you know, are very keen on STEM training for those low-wage jobs of the future!

Plus, there is money to be made. The neoliberal venture also involves a $1 million state economic development grant from Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo, as well as probable totally tax-exempt status for at least a decade courtesy of Cuomo's new "StartUpNY" public-private initiative. (Private profit at public expense. But jobs, jobs, jobs of the future!) Incidentally, the SUNY press release on Eldridge's investment makes absolutely no mention of his Congressional run.

Like me, maybe you were wondering if Sean Eldridge is too good to be true, or even if he really exists. Well, rest assured, he lives and breathes the same air as we do -- in 3-D, no less. Unfortunately, judging from this radio interview, he sounds like he borrowed all his canned talking points from Barack Obama. Words like future, skills, entrepreneurs, opportunity and gridlock fly fast and furious. Which is not surprising, seeing how he got his political start, while still in college,volunteering for Obama. He even met his future husband during the Obama campaign. But meanwhile, an empty suit channeling an empty suit does not bode well, despite having SKDKnickerbocker, a lobbying/PR firm run by former Obama adviser Anita Dunn, doing his publicity.

To be fair, the Politico accusations of willful non-accessibility are sort of unfair. Because when Sean and his hubby first burst upon on the local scene, they graciously gave an exclusive interview to the New York Times. Had I not read about a person wanting to represent me on the front page of the Times, instead of, say, in the local weekly, I never would have known he existed. You can't imagine how fired up I became as I read this:

Two years ago, Sean Eldridge and his husband, the Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, bought a $5 million estate in Garrison, about 50 miles north of New York City. It offered 80 acres of rolling fields and a farmhouse once owned by a Vanderbilt. It would also allow Mr. Eldridge, 26, to run for the local Congressional seat if he chose to.

But that seat appeared unattainable, and soon the couple’s gaze shifted north, to the neighboring district. In January, they bought a $2 million modern home here overlooking a reservoir, laying the groundwork for Mr. Eldridge’s campaign for their new local Congressional seat, New York’s 19th.

Word of Mr. Eldridge’s political plans has delighted the friends who make up his social circle: Donors to his exploratory committee include George Soros, the billionaire financier, and Sean Parker, the tech entrepreneur behind Napster and Spotify.

The locals, though? Not so much, apparently. It's really been a series of provincial faux pas for this plutocratic transplant to the provinces.  Before the awkward moment involving Politico, the first awkward moment was when he neglected to install a mailbox at the gates of his third residence, and his voter registration form was returned to the Elections Board as undeliverable. But in his Times interview, he convincingly scoffed at the notion that his move to rustic Ulster County had anything at all to do with personal political ambition:

“The Hudson Valley is my home,” he said. “It’s where I work. It’s where I got married.”

Mr. Eldridge said he and his husband, who also own a loft in SoHo in Manhattan, were settling into their new upstate home. He described a routine that includes grocery shopping and dining in Woodstock, the artsy enclave nearby. “We’re very involved in the community,” he said.

Mr. Eldridge’s supporters note that for all the trappings of wealth he now possesses, Mr. Eldridge grew up in a middle-class community in Ohio, where both of his parents were doctors; they say he has a genuine understanding of people of modest means.

And while the 19th District has vast stretches of rural, conservative communities, it is also home to more Democratic-leaning places, like New Paltz and Monticello, that could give his candidacy a lift.

“He clearly has a bright future,” said Mike Hein, a Democrat who is the Ulster County executive.

And that brings us to yet another faux pas in the unrelenting series. It seems Sean never bothered to personally call upon the Kingston (the county seat) mayor before he emailed him, casually asking for his endorsement. Mayor Shayne Gallo was neither amused nor impressed:

“I was extremely surprised, and I was offended,” he said. “I would think it would be prudent … if not politically polite and respectful, to reach out to those who’ve gone through this process and who are local yokels and who are stakeholders in the community you hope to represent.”

“Considering that someone isn’t from the area, wasn’t born or raised in the district, doesn’t have an established record in public or private service, nor any notable achievements in our local or regional economy … I’m very perplexed by that,” the mayor said.

OK, one more faux pas and I'll quit, I promise. When Sean Eldridge forked over that $750,000 for the 3-D printing venture in New Paltz, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-Wall Street) was on hand to gush over the gift, but with the caveat that such technology has a worrisome tendency to be used for nefarious purposes, as in terrorists sneaking undetectable plastic guns past TSA gropers and onto airplanes.

And Sean responded, "Although there's no silver bullet for economic growth in the Hudson Valley, we believe that 3-D printing has tremendous potential to grow our economy, spark innovation and create jobs in the region." 

Plastic bullets, yes. Silver bullets, no. 

Plastic candidates? About a billion bucks a dozen.

 

Third Home a Charm?

A Weaponized Human Refuse Dump

It's bad enough in the most drastic epoch of wealth disparity in American history that most people are suffering economically. What makes this particular era so heinous is that the hungry, the homeless, the unemployed, and the underemployed are being kicked when they're already down. They are being ground into human mulch for dumping in a vast neoliberal landfill. People are not only poor, their poverty and suffering have literally been deemed crimes by the elite class of sociopaths running the place.

As Henry A. Giroux puts it in his new Truthout essay,

Economists such as Paul Krugman and Robert Reich have argued that we are in a new Gilded Age, one that mimics a time when robber barons and strikebreakers ruled, and the government and economy were controlled by a cabal that was rich, powerful and ruthless.[3] And, of course, blacks, women and the working class were told to mind their place in a society controlled by the rich. What is often missing in these analyses is that what is new in the second Gilded Age is not just about the moral sanctioning of greed, the corruption of politics by big money, and the ruthlessness of class power.

What is unique is the rise of a brutal punishing-incarceration state that imposes its power on the dispossessed, the emergence of a surveillance state that spies on and suppresses dissenters, the emergence of vast cultural apparatuses that colonize subjectivity in the interests of the market, and a political class that is uninterested in political concessions and appears immune from control by nation states. The second Gilded Age is really a more brutal form of authoritarianism driven by what psychologist Robert Jay Lifton rightly calls a "death-saturated age," in which matters of violence, survival and trauma now infuse everyday life.

Giroux points out that for the first time, an entire generation has been condemned to lives of debt and hopelessness. Other recessions and depressions in our history have ended. This one is being extended, by deliberate design:

What has changed about an entire generation of  young people includes not only neoliberal society’s disinvestment in youth and the permanent fate of downward mobility but also the fact that youth live in a commercially carpet-bombed and commodified environment that is unlike anything experienced by those of previous generations.  Nothing has prepared this generation for the inhospitable and savage new world of commodification, privatization, joblessness, frustrated hopes, surveillance and stillborn projects. The present generation has been born into a throwaway society of consumers in which both goods and young people are viewed increasingly as redundant and disposable or they are merely valued as consumers and commodities. In this discourse, young people are not seen as troubled but viewed as a source of trouble; rather than viewed as being "at risk," they are the risk and subject to a range of punitive policies.

So what can be done to prevent even more of us being treated as garbage by Neoliberal Waste Management? Writes Giroux,

It will not be enough only to expose the falseness of the propaganda pumped out by the commanding neoliberal cultural apparatuses. We also need to create alternative narratives about what the promise of democracy might be for our children and ourselves. This demands a break from established political parties, the creation of alternative public spheres in which to produce democratic narratives and visions, and a notion of politics that is educative, one that takes seriously how people interpret and mediate the world, how they see themselves in relation to others, and what it might mean to imagine otherwise in order to act otherwise.

He suggests alliances among disparate groups of feminists, immigration activists, organized labor, teachers, students -- and independence from and rejection of the two corporate political parties. Such solidarity is already manifest in spots -- for example in Chicago, where immigrants, mental health self-advocacy groups and teachers regularly join together to protest Mayor Rahm "One Percent" Emanuel's relentless privatization of education and housing and public sector jobs.

Read Giroux's whole piece. First, you get depressed. Then you get mad. Then you get inspired. And finally, you get moving.

Not to be confused with MoveOn, of course. Because you know what happens in those fake progressive, party-aligned veal pens? You eventually get chopped up and eaten up. And of course you know what happens to the leftovers. They're thrown out instead of saved. It's the American way.

So let's put the ruling class on a diet. If we refuse to be the food on their plates, it will be kind of impossible for them to throw us down their gilded garbage chutes. Right?

Oh, Those Demonizing Dems

I don't know what's funnier: that Beltway insiders are professing shock that Democrats are boldly demonizing the Supreme Court, or that the corporate Democrats in mid-term election mode actually think they'll be taken seriously as raging born-again populists.

Because when Senator Chuck Schumer (D-Wall Street) rails against predatory plutocrats, hilarity not only ensues -- it explodes:

“They wish to dismantle all limits on giving, piece by piece, until we are back to the days of the robber barons, when anyone or anything could give unlimited money, undisclosed, and make our political system seem so rigged that everyone will lose interest in our democracy,” Schumer said of the court.

Um, Chuck. The political system doesn't seem rigged, it is rigged, thanks in large part to your own complicity. Maybe people have lost interest in our democracy because in actuality, the system is on the fast track to an oligarchy. This did not start with the McCutcheon vs. FEC Supreme Court decision or with the Koch Bros, Chuckie.

Schumer is said not to be interested in the chairmanship of the Senate Banking Committee, purely because too-incessant public posturing against the very predators who finance him might dry up the dollars, even though it's simply posturing. Plus, he is in line to replace Harry Reid.  And being forced to go soft on Wall Street as banking leader could hurt his chances for the leadership. Those dreaded lefty bloggers might give him a hard time.

But still, it's explosively hilarious that Schumer is now publicly demonizing the robber barons, given that his last target was "lefty bloggers" who demonized... the robber barons!

From the December New Republic interview with Isaac Chotiner:

IC: It seems like one difference would be the approach to Wall Street. I assume you’re not supporting a reinstatement of Glass-Steagall,³ which she (Elizabeth Warren) is sponsoring?

CS: No.

IC: You and Mayor Bloomberg, in 2007, said that reregulating Wall Street would cause people to flee overseas to London. That is very different than Warren.

CS: It has got to be, to me, a careful balance, OK? Wall Street excesses helped lead to the Great Recession. And to sit there and do nothing, or do what the Republicans want—repeal Dodd-Frank—makes no sense. But on the other hand, I think that you just don’t attack Wall Street because they’re successful or rich.

I just unsuccessfully, with Bloomberg, supported raising the building height in midtown Manhattan, so we could build more office buildings. Office buildings are our factories—imagine the people of Michigan saying, “We don’t want to build a new auto factory, because the Ford family will get richer, or the person who builds the factory will make money.” You’ve got to look at the effect on average folks. The vast majority of the people employed by Wall Street are the secretary who goes in to work on the Long Island Rail Road, who makes fifty, sixty, seventy thousand dollars a year. I’m not saying Elizabeth does this, but there are some on the far left who just have a visceral hatred of Wall Street. It’s counterproductive.

Um, Chuck. Comparing Wall Street to Detroit is disingenuous. Your office buildings are not factories that manufacture things. They are the corrupt centers of the vampiric financialization of the entire global economy, the direct cause of the most soul-crushingly extreme wealth disparity in the history of the United States.

CS: You don’t want to go after them for the sake of going after them. The left-wing blogs want you to be completely and always anti–Wall Street. It’s not the right way to be.

IC: So are the left-wing blogs as bad as the Tea Party ones in this case?

CS: Left-wing blogs are the mirror image. They just have less credibility and less clout.

Chuck, Chuck, Chuck! There goes your falsely equivalent centrism again.The "left" goes after things based on reality -- like the widespread documented unprosecuted mortgage fraud by the robber-bankers. The right goes after things based upon their own lies, such as their chronic climate change denialism.

CS: It’s sort of funny. People on Wall Street think I haven’t done enough for them, and people on the left think I’ve done too much for Wall Street. On this one, I go by my internal gyroscope, and I’m pretty happy about where I’ve come down.

I had one of those gyroscopes when I was a kid. They spin and they spin and they spin. And when they come down, they come down with an annoying little clatter. Until the controlling player re-attaches the string and spins it a little more. They tilt at crazy angles, but with enough practice you can even get one to walk on a tightrope. It's sort of funny.

This time around, the spin is that it's safe to demonize the Supremes as long as you pretend that they're not every bit as controlled by the Wall Street's oligarchic strings as you are. As if the robber barons aren't the continuing source of your own continuing grasp on raw political power.As if you think you can pound the table for Wall Street deregulation with your right hand and pound the table for the victims of Wall Street with your left.

It would be sort of funny if it weren't so mind-numbingly corrupt.

Vomitrocities, Part 2

Little did I guess when I chose the title to the previous post that I'd soon be experiencing my own little vomitrocity, culminating in my admission to hospital over the weekend with the mother of all gallbladder attacks. Talk about karma! I am feeling much better now (morphine drips* sure are grand!) but not up to my usual mental or physical par --  so blogging will be limited.

Meanwhile, I'll be doing the lazy aggregation thing and posting links as I try to play catch-up on the news I've missed. When I got home last night, I naturally turned on CNN to see if they were still playing scavenger hunt on the missing plane. They were. Ashleigh Banfield was doing her chirpy ping thing, I guess because Don Lemon got tired of playing with his toy airplane.

  But Bill Moyers had a great show about restaurant slaves and sub-minimum wage. I was extremely and most pleasantly surprised that 60 Minutes, which had been veering into right wing territory for quite awhile, turned the tables on itself and did an excellent story on extreme poverty and lack of medical care in Appalachia. It seems that corporate media world in general is waking up and smelling the humanitarian crisis coffee in this country. Everybody who's anybody finally seems to be noticing that we are living in a third world country. Whether this will lead to drastic change is another story. Because the plutocrats own the joint, and they are a tenacious bunch.

Contributor Pearl Volkov shares her TimesPick comment on Ross Douthat's health care column:

Your concerns are valid, Mr. Douthat. I am a U.S. citizen living in Canada as a permanent resident and receive full medical coverage as well as my family in this country. How come Canada can accomplish this feat without bankrupting the nation? And do it at a fraction of the cost of the U.S. with better quality coverage? Simple. Our taxes which are more progressive cover the costs and there are no private for profit insurance companies or private medical conglomerates involved and hospitals are regulated with costs for medical care included in our coverage and no one's care is tied to their jobs.

Until and unless the health care needs for citizens are removed from the private sector, any form of Obamacare or other coverage will become an albatross for the nation and force medical needs to offer less and less help for the people.

Simple? We will have to have a financial and political revolution in my birth country before sanity will prevail and not only in the health care sector. It is depressing to witness what is happening and what the future holds. I am indeed fortunate to be living in Canada at this point in time.

You can say that again, Pearl. My hospital roommate, who'd just undergone cancer surgery, was more worried about what, when, and even if her crappy insurance would pay than with her own recovery and prognosis. Her son was upset because his boss had been giving him a hard time about taking time off to care for his mother. These are people who've worked all their lives and played by all the rules.

Something is terribly wrong with this country, and has been for a very long time. 

To be continued.... 

P.S. (4/8) I want to thank those who've commented here and emailed me with get-well wishes. I think my gall is now being properly redirected toward those who truly deserve it. See: Schumer, Chuck, above. 

P.P.S. (4/10) Several medical professionals have told me it was unlikely that I received a continuous pure morphine drip. To the best of my recollection, the nurse did use the word morphine, but she most probably said "morphine-like" or something similar. In any case, whatever I got morphed that bitch of a pain right away, and I was very sad when they discontinued it after a very short time. I guess I'll find out exactly what they shot into my veins when I get the bill. And then I'll really need some strong meds.

Vomitrocities

The last thing Barack Obama wants to do is to spoil the appetites of his rich benefactors or even worse, make them throw up after an expensive meal. Vomitoria are not yet fixtures in the homes of our contemporary oligarchs, as they were rumored to be back in Caligula's day.

Obama told attendees at the fundraiser, held at the Lincoln Park home of a top donor, that he was late because of the situation developing at the military base.

According to the Associated Press, Obama's announcement drew gasps and cries of, "Oh no." 

"We're monitoring the situation carefully," Obama said, echoing a statement he made earlier in the afternoon at a Chicago steakhouse where he held the first of two fundraisers benefiting the Democratic National Committee.

Obama did not dwell on the shooting, instead telling donors that being back home was "invigorating, and it reminds you of why you got into this business in the first place — because you got a lot of people here who have taught me a lot about community, friendship and family and for that reason I'm really grateful."

"As I look around this room, I'm reminded of all the pieces of myself that are connected to individuals in this room," Obama said. "There are people here who have been friends of mine for a couple of decades now. There are folks here who were with me when nobody gave me a chance to even get to the U.S. Senate."

Once the president had determined that the shooter who'd terrorized hundreds of people in the latest massacre at Fort Hood was a mentally ill Iraq veteran and not some evil jihadist enemy of our Freedoms, he was free to continue his official function as legalized bribe taker at the home of Craig Freedman. From all indications, a good time was had by all who forked over $10,000 for a little food and a lot of political access. There are compromised pieces of Obama all over their marbled halls.

Barack Obama made no mention of Wednesday's Supreme Court decision allowing them to fork over nearly unlimited wads of cash in the future.

 Craig Freedman, decades-long friend of Obama and co-host of the event, just so happens to be one of those sociopathic poobahs selling the "skills gap" zombie idea as an excuse to pay skilled welders at his factories only $12-$15 a hour while collecting corporate welfare in the form of tax incentives. Just last February, he was on CNBC bitching about how hard it is to find good slave labor to construct his bus and truck seats, even though public money is financing the training of his workers. He also has the contract for seating for Chicago's buses, as part of a deal with Mayor Rahm Emanuel to hire the unemployed in the future, for something called "Skills for Chicagoland's Future." Notice how these public private partnerships are always about the future, and not for the calamitous reality of the present? Suck the public dry today, promise to hire a few lucky duckies tomorrow, and laugh uproariously all the way to the bank.

And just yesterday, before his private fundraisers (transportation to which was funded by public money) Obama was in Michigan, telling college students to get those skills and get that Obamacare to tide them over during their unpaid postgraduate internships. Rowdy protesters were not allowed inside, where, using his g-droppin' country twang for the occasion, he bellowed,

Now, here’s the context.  Our economy is doing better.  It’s growing.  Our businesses are creating jobs -- 8.7 million new jobs over the past four years.  (Applause.)  Our manufacturing sector, which had been losing jobs throughout the ‘90s and throughout the -- what do you call it -- aughts?  (Laughter.)  You know, the 2000 to 2010, whatever you call that.  (Laughter.)

But manufacturing had been losing jobs -- about a third of manufacturing had lost -- and obviously that hit Michigan really hard.  But we’re now seeing the manufacturing sector add jobs for the first time since the 1990s.  So that is good news.  (Applause.)

The housing market is recovering.  Obviously the stock market has recovered, which means people’s 401(k)s, if they have them, are doing a lot better.

Troops that were fighting two wars, they’re coming home.  (Applause.)   We just went through the first month since 2003 where no U.S. soldier was killed in either Afghanistan or Iraq.  (Applause.)

Oops. I guess he spoke just a couple of hours too soon in that last paragraph. But his "heartbreak" over four new soldier deaths was sufficiently healed later that day to carry on money-grubbing.

By the way, Obama did not eat with either the lesser $10,000-a-platers, or the greater $32,000 big ticket holders. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, his food was pre-tested, pre-tasted, and served by military waiters at a private soiree with Mayor One Percent Rahm Emanuel and propaganda flack David Axelrod. Even his water was brought into the restaurant separately by a Navy steward.

Security State-Tested, Plutocracy-Approved

As his motorcade snaked through Chicago between plutocratic events, Obama was greeted by block after block of protesters. And while the president was drinking his special water and scarfing down his special steak, one demonstrator outside grew so incensed about the relentless onslaught of vomitrocities that he grabbed a TV reporter's mic and yelled out "Obama is a war criminal!" as blue-helmeted Chicago police on their horses looked on. The video is here, with another angle here. A second reporter prematurely broke off her own live spiel because, she said, she was there to talk about Democratic fund-raising, not protesting from the riffraff. Actually, it was fairly obvious she feared that she would be next.

Occupy Redux?

That title is misleading, because despite all the post-mortems, the Occupy movement has been alive and well since the security state disbanded the last physical camp a little over two years ago. It's branched off into Occupy Our Homes, Occupy Sandy, The Fight for $15, Movement Against Monsanto and GMOS,  Anti-Homelessness and Year of The Rent Freeze Coalition, Stop/Stop and Frisk-Stop Mass Incarceration Group, End The Fed, Ban Fracking Now, People’s Power Assembly NY/NJ, Occu-Evolve(OWS), Nationalize the Fed, Money Out Of Politics, The Alternative Banking Group of Occupy Wall Street, and Golden Farm Workers, among others.

So get ready for a re-occupation of Zuccotti Park and scores or even hundreds of other sites this Friday in what has been dubbed a Worldwide Wave of Action. The date, April 4, has been chosen to mark the 48th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. as he protested with striking sanitation workers in Memphis. 

Friday's events in New York City will begin with a march of the grossly underpaid airport workers and their supporters from JFK Airport to LaGuardia Airport. Later that morning, proponents of a Robin Hood tax on Wall Street will hold a sit-in. Afternoon events include a "Disobedience School" for newbies by some of the original Occupy organizers.

It should be interesting to see how new Mayor Bill de Blasio, elected on a wave of progressive populism, will react to the events. I suspect it will be positive... as long as it's a one day only affair. You may recall that Mayor Mike Bloomberg himself was initially barely tolerant of Occupy and its predecessor, Bloombergville. It was two months before the final Homeland Security-orchestrated national onslaught against peaceful protesters began. And this being a midterm election year. I imagine Democratic candidates will be jockeying for camera position to gush their support.

The Worldwide Wave of Action is set to run through July 4. You can find more information here.

Meanwhile, I'd be remiss in not reporting that this apparent resurgence of Occupy is being described as "psy-ops propaganda" by some, because some of the publicity is a little strange and the demands are a bit free-floating. I think those Anonymous masks are also freaking people out. Plus, just as in the original Occupy movement, there is a hefty dose of libertarianism and LaRouche in the mix. Michel Chossudovsky has more.

Another possible red flag is the participation of establishment types. Former MSNBC host Dylan Ratigan, for example, is enthusiastically blogging about it on the Huffington Post.

So, I am keeping an open mind. Remember, it was AdBusters magazine, a commercial enterprise, that initially publicized the Zuccotti Park encampment.

Update: What exquisite timing. As expected, the Supreme Court just dealt a huge blow to democracy by unleashing even deadlier torrents of unlimited cash into the political system. The 5-4 decision on McCutcheon vs. FEC has been described as Citizens United on Steroids.